The scholarly output of the new coronavirus research has been proliferating. During five months, an amount of 14,588 scientific publications about nCoV-2 and COVID-19 has been generated intensively (as indexed in Scopus on 31 May 2020). Such a knowledge outburst has created ample interest in understanding the research landscape of this newly configured area. This paper demonstrates on scientometric dimensions of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) research using quantifiable characteristics of the publication dataset. Findings reveal that the rate of publication growth (1600%) is very significant to a synergic response of the researchers to combat with the most extended sequence of an RNA virus. Indeed their response has geared up to an average of 100 articles per day. Many scholarly publishers have disclosed their preprint servers to make the publications available immediately, even by enabling Open Access. The scientific contents have published in more than 500 journals from 240 academic publishers. While the top-ten publishers occupied almost 70% of the articles, then about 25% of the studies were sponsored by 300 funding agencies. Among the notable journals Lancet, Nature, BMJ, JAMA, JMV, and NEJM are prominent. Findings also reveal that majority of the contributions have occurred in Medical Science, focusing on virology, immunology, epidemiology, pharmacology, public health, critical care, and emergency medicine. However, the closely associated terms are virus transmission, infection control, asymptomatic, quarantine, pneumonia, human, disease severity, clinical trials, viral pathogenesis, pandemic, risk, and mortality. The study suggests that academic hubs are located mostly in the USA, China, Italy, and the UK. Among the productive institutions; Huazhong Univ (China), Tongji Med. College (China), Harvard Med. School (USA), Univ of Milan (Italy), INSERM (France), UCL (UK) are outstanding. The G7 countries together produced 50% of the global research output on nCov-2. It also noted an encouraging trend of collaborative research across many countries and disciplines, where the values of CI (6.46), DC (0.79), and CC (0.59) are very significant. It examines the geographical diversity of the collaborating authors, thereby visualized their linkages via co-authorship occurrences. Finally, it analyzed the publications’ impact to showcase the most influential contributions of the new coronavirus research.

Information security has been a crucial issue in modern information management; thus cryptographic techniques have become inevitable to safeguard the digital information assets as well as to defend the invasion of privacy in modern information society, and likely to have far reaching impact on national security policies. This paper demonstrates the intellectual development of cryptographic research based on quantifiable characteristics of scholarly publications over a decade of the present century (2001 to 2010). The study critically examines the publication growth, authorship pattern, collaboration trends, and predominant areas of research in cryptology. Rank list of prolific contributors, productive institutions, and predominant countries have been carried out using fractional counting method. Strenuous efforts have been made to perform the activity index (performance indicator) of JOC, to determine the degree of collaboration in quantitative terms, to ascertain the collaboration density, as well as to test the empirical validation of Lotka's law in this scientific specialty. Major findings reveal that performance of JOC in cryptographic research corresponds precisely to the growth of world's publication activity (activity index = 1.1) over a decade of time; single-authored papers count only 25 % and average authorship accounts for 2.4 per paper; an increasing trend of multi-authored publications and a significant degree of collaboration (DC = 0.74) implies that cryptographers prefer to work in highly collaborative manner; author productivity distribution data partially fits the Lotka's law, when the value of a (productivity parameter) approximated to 2.35 (instead of 2) and the number of articles does not exceed two. While large majority of collaborations constituted across the countries (56 %), then adequate amount of intercountry bilateral and multilateral collaboration signifies higher density or greater strength in the research network; most of the potential collaborators are emanated from 10 institutions of 5 different countries; however, cryptographic research is dominated by USA and Israel. More interestingly, vast majority among top-twenty ranked productive authors are & Jiban K.

The quantification of scholarly performance has become an obvious necessity in many academic pursuits. Evaluation of research output is therefore an integral element of R&D institutions worldwide. However the quality- weighted dimensions of quantity are gaining momentum. Consequently, a good number of evaluative studies on publication productivity have been made available in scientometric literature. This paper critically scrutinises the literature on research productivity concerning scientific institutions (include universities and departments) in an informational context. It provides a thorough review to map the quantum of knowledge relating to ‘institutional research productivity’ correlating the Indian vista. It is, however, indicative to find the gaps and shortcomings in this specialty of research; hence enunciate the issues both attended and unattended. The paper also offers a few recommendations to undertake evaluative studies with caution. Thus it shows a coherent picture of this emerging area in the sociology of science.

Library cooperation has been experienced by librarians for long. Indeed mutual efforts were viewed as essential by the early leaders of modern librarianship. This paper reviews the progressive development of library cooperation, and draws attention to the mutual-efforts done in libraries during sixteenth century and beyond. Thus gradual development of strategic alliances between the libraries has been discussed, and success stories are noted emphasizing on the initiatives in India. It also provides a brief historical sketch of library consortia, which was evident in the 1930s. The paper recognizes the importance of electronic consortium and their growth in the present century. Consortia are being treated as means for libraries to survive. Finally, as technological advancements have been alleviating many ills of information sharing activities; therefore, the spirits of cooperation are reinforced and mode of cooperation has undergone transformation and consortia boom is prevalent across the globe.

The debate on quality versus quantity is still persistent for methodological considerations. These two approaches are highly contrasting in their epistemology and contrary to each other. A single composite indicator that reasonably senses both quality and quantity would be significant toward performance. This paper evaluates the potency of the combined metric for quality assessment of publications (QP) in India’s National Institutional Research Framework (NIRF) exercise in 2020. It also suggests a potential improvement in quality measurement to obtain the rankings more rationally with finer tunings.